The Effect of Alcohol on the Heart after MI
November 9th, 2007 | by Mark Sapienza, M.D. |
Long term alcohol use may have many deleterious effects on the human body but little is known on the prognostic implications of drinking after a person suffers an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or “heart attack”. European investigators seeking to answer this question enrolled 1346 consecutive patients between ages 45 - 70 who had a first non-fatal AMI. Patients received baseline clinical examinations and were followed for over eight years. Subsequent hospitalizations, total mortality and cardiac mortality were followed and hazard ratios (statistical predictors of death) were generated comparing total mortality to cardiac mortality based on amount of alcohol consumed. The results, which are published in this month’s European Heart Journal, demonstrated that there may a beneficial effect on long term prognosis in patients drinking moderate alcohol. Interestingly, people who quit drinking at the time of their initial heart attack had the highest predictor of total mortality based on hazard ratios.
Reference: Janszky et al (Eur Heart J. 2007 Nov 7)